The rate of problem gambling is more than twice as high in adolescents as it is for adults (2%) (Ipsos MORI, 2009), and the younger the age of onset of problem gambling the more severe the problem can be in later life. It has been suggested that help-seeking for gambling problems is uncommon amongst young people (Gupta & Derevensky, 2000; Hardoon, Gupta & Derevensky, 2003) and a number of speculative reasons for this have been presented (Chevalier & Griffiths, 2004; Griffiths, 2001). However to date there is a paucity of empirical evidence which explore barriers to treatment access in young problem gamblers (Suurvali, 2009). The research aims were to generate empirical evidence to identify and explain barriers to treatment access for young problem gamblers in the UK. The main objectives were to i) Explore the attitudes and perceptions that young people hold towards problem gambling; ii) Investigate the potential barriers which may prevent young people from seeking treatment; and iii) To understand the salience of the identified barriers to treatment access amongst young problem gamblers. The research employed a mixed methods approach, incorporating exploratory studies, indepth interviews with problem gambling treatment professionals (n=11) and problem gamblers (n=6), and a study employing Q methodology to help understand the subjectivity of opinion on barriers to help-seeking (n=21). The main findings were that there are four main groups of barriers to treatment access for young people: treatment barriers; environmental barriers; social and motivational barriers and ‘gambler-centric’ barriers. These barriers are experienced in different ways by different participants, and the Q methodological study identified four main viewpoints among young problem gamblers as to why they may not seek treatment. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge, generating an empirical understanding of the subjective opinion on, and salience of barriers to, problem gambling help-seeking, as they are experienced by young problem gamblers, and empirically grounding previously identified barriers to treatment access in this population. A number of new barriers (emotional immaturity and poor verbal communication; lack of clinical skills in treatment providers; and lack of flexibility to suit client needs) were also identified.

This thesis assesses the Gulf states’ perceptions towards US hegemony security in the Persian/Arabian Gulf. A number of questions are asked regarding security and stability in the Gulf, the tools, means and objectives of the USA in the region, regional powers and their role in achieving stability in the Gulf. Special references is given to the perspectives of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Iraq and Iran regarding regional security, stability, the role of US hegemony, and their roles in building a new security system in the region. Moreover questions addressed include the occupation of Iraq by the USA and how it has impacted the Gulf region and the capabilities of the Gulf states to build a regional security system independent of US protection. The aim of this study is to provide a conceptual foundation for a discussion about the future shape of security and stability arrangements in the Gulf. Secondly, this research aims to analyse the role of the USA in the regional security complex, its key interests in the region, and its means to achieving its objectives there. Finally, this thesis examines the perceptions of the GCC states, Iraq and Iran toward the role of the USA and its hegemony in the Gulf. Furthermore, this research project also aims to study the failure of the region's states to develop a regional security regime and their perceptions of this failure. The Persian/Arabian Gulf is a strategic economic, political and military region that has increased its vital significance to neighbouring regions and the world as a whole in the past two decades or more. In particular its important position as a source of gas and oil for the global energy market has caused this region to be of interest to state and non-state actors around the world, and arguably has made the region more unstable. The hypothesis tested in this work is, that consider the importance of the Gulf states perception of the security and stability and the US hegemony and its role, as the only possible way to stabilize the region. as well as considering the Gulf states perception of protect themselves and build their own regional security system. That the USA has succeeded to a great extent in controlling and exercising hegemony over the Persian/Arabian Gulf region in a way compatible with its interests and objectives, which are: primarily, guaranteeing the flow of oil and gas, protecting current regimes in the GCC and guaranteeing the security and supremacy of Israel. The originality of this thesis in part lies in focus on the Gulf states’ perceptions of US hegemony in the Gulf and its impact on security there., By employing a constructivist approach and combining it with a theory of Hegemonic Stability, an alternative understanding of the capabilities of the USA as hegemonic state in the Gulf is developed to examine its ability to control and gain support from states in the Gulf.

Existing research has predominantly focused on a limited range of childhood events and personality disorders, such as childhood maltreatment and borderline personality disorder. Moreover, researchers rarely account for multiple risk factors within the same study, despite the reality that childhood events do not occur in isolation. Therefore, the current research aims to contribute to the knowledge on childhood events and personality disorder symptoms by investigating a wider range of risk and protective factors in a community-based sample. The first study was a survey that identified common positive childhood events for inclusion in a new childhood events checklist that was designed to assess a wider range of both positive and negative childhood events. Study Two used latent class analysis to profile the childhood events and personality disorder symptoms. Study Three provided an examination of the association between the latent classes of negative childhood events, positive childhood events and personality disorder symptoms. Study Four provided a more in-depth understanding into the factors underpinning the relationships between childhood events and personality disorder symptoms from a qualitative perspective. Overall, the results showed that a lack of positive childhood events greatly exacerbates the likelihood of developing personality disorder symptoms in addition to the effects of negative events. In tandem with other risk and protective factors, interpersonal interactions, coping styles and subjective perceptions of one’s own experiences appeared to play a role in the risk of developing personality disorders. The implications from this research are that personality disorder treatment approaches should focus on fostering positive thoughts, feelings and behaviours to affect the risk of personality disorder symptoms.

Online virtual worlds known as Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) have gained increased popularity over the last decade. MMORPGs provide a sophisticated environment that enables complete immersion within the virtual world to the extent that it may become an alternative reality to its users. Some researchers have suggested that online gaming addiction is growing in prevalence among adolescents and adult gamers. It has been proposed that research is needed to establish the incidence and prevalence of MMORPG addiction. The aim of this body of research was to examine the impact of MMORPGs (psychologically and socially) on peoples’ lives for the purpose of providing an empirical research base on which future research in the area can build. Using a mixed methods approach for data collection and analysis, an online scoping study, interview study and two questionnaire studies were conducted. The thesis provides a detailed conceptualisation of the psychological processes involved in MMORPG playing. The thesis was directed by previous research into video games, online gaming and addiction which provided a substantive picture of the psychosocial effects of online gaming. The findings showed that there were both positive and negative effects associated with online gaming; gamers used MMORPGs to alleviate negative feelings and to meet new people, learn about new cultures, and build friendships. Gamers also provided detailed descriptions of personal problems that had arisen due to playing MMORPGs. A small percentage of gamers (3.6%) were classified as addicted to MMORPGs, these gamers may find it difficult to control their game playing behaviour. However, there are still gaps in our knowledge of MMORPGs. Overall, the research has shown that the psychology of MMORPGs is an important topic that requires further in-depth investigation. The present research has revealed valuable information about the impact of MMORPGs on the lives of gamers that can be built upon by other researchers. Implications of the findings regarding excessive playing and addiction to MMORPGs, and social responsibility were discussed, and recommendations for future research studies were proposed.

The process of sexual selection is likely to incorporate multiple sources of information that can be used to identify a suitable mate. Utilising multiple signals for sexual selection could be advantageous since together these might limit the chance of mating with a suboptimal partner (Møller & Pomiankowski, 1993) and thus avoid the cost of unhealthy progeny. However to date, research has focused primarily on unitary signals of attractiveness. Therefore, this thesis aimed to identify the function and relative importance of face and voice signals in human mate attractiveness, with particular reference to Candolin’s (2003) framework of signal integration. The findings suggested that female face and voice signals appear to be related and are likely to constitute back-up signals. Together, female faces and voices interact thus modulating the attractiveness of face-voice compound stimuli and provide a more accurate estimate of fertility. Male voices decreased female response latencies when presented congruently with male faces, which suggests that they are integrated. However, male face-voice integration did not enhance the detection or discrimination of attractive male faces. Rather, females’ readiness to rate male faces and voices was delayed when the stimuli were more attractive. Male faces and voices were shown to positively and independently influence the perception of compound stimuli attractiveness and in contrast to female stimuli, male face and voice signals appear to be unrelated; as such, they are likely to constitute multiple messages. While faces are proposed to signal health, male voices have been proposed to communicate information relating to dominance. Together, male faces and voices provide a more accurate estimate of overall mate quality. In conclusion, taking into account aspects of sensory integration promises to add further insight into the cognitive processes involved in mate attractiveness and person perception. Furthermore, studies investigating the integration of different modalities and in different contexts will be important to understanding their evolution, function and importance in human attractiveness perception.

Traditional models of children’s reading, based on fixed invariant stages, have proved less than adequate in explaining the flexibility in which children approach the task of learning to read. One way to examine emergent reading is to focus on the child’s strategy use as a discrete measure of early reading development. However, the exploration of such strategy use within the domain of reading is a relatively new area of research. This current research adds to that burgeoning debate and presents evidence of young children’s strategy use and the implications for current theories of reading development. Study One examined the validity of verbal self-reports as a way of capturing early word reading strategies by assessing the veridicality and reactivity of verbal self-reports. Study Two explored children’s sensitivity to rime unit frequencies and how this can shift their reliance on certain word reading strategies. Study Three provided an in-depth examination of reading errors in young children to capture a more detailed account of the processes involved in early word-reading. Study Four used a repeated measures study that examined adaptability in children’s reading strategy performance over one academic term. Through an analysis of strategy use and error analysis, Study Four provided a greater understanding of children’s reliance on using lexical and non-lexical strategies. Overall, the results showed that verbal self-reports remain valid and that children were able to accurately verbalise their processing. Children’s strategy use was found to be variable and flexible over time and strategy choice was dependent on children’s sensitivity to underlying orthographic features (including rime unit frequency and grapheme-to-phoneme regularity). The conclusion from this research is that children’s reading is more flexible than the original stage models portray and is in line with phase models of reading development which allow children to progress or regress in their choice of strategy as needed.

Objectives. The objective of this study was to gain an understanding of men’s holistic experience of life with Type 1 diabetes. Design. One-to-one interviews were conducted with 15 men, all of whom have Type 1 diabetes. Interviews were also conducted with 10 diabetic men and their partners. All interviews were audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed. Additionally, postings to an online-forum, specifically dedicated to men with diabetes, were collected. All data were analysed using a grounded theory style approach. This involved developing codes and abstract categories from the data which, when linked together, provide an understanding of men’s experience of life with diabetes. Results. The relationship between men and diabetes is established in response to the perceived congruency between the management of diabetes and the attainment of personal goals. This relationship is not fixed, rather as personal goals shift (in response to changing personal circumstances) so too do one’s relationship with diabetes. The centrality of the couple to the experience of life with diabetes is evidenced in the way men and their partners respond to the presence of diabetes-related erectile dysfunction, and also in the way they negotiate the daily management of diabetes, through varying levels of reliance. Conclusions. The results point to the all-encompassing nature of diabetes and highlight the need for research to move its focus from issues of self-management to the holistic experience of living with Type 1 diabetes. While men pursue the fulfilment of personal goals, over the health-related goals of diabetes, they are unable to fully escape the hold of diabetes. It is the psychological weight of living with diabetes which negates normality. It is important therefore, for this aspect of diabetic-life to be acknowledged and attended to if the quality of life of those affected by diabetes is to be maximised.

Having emerged from the self-taught hacker culture of 1980s home-computing, contemporary video game development is now a mainstream global business. Since the industry has managed to gain respectability without sacrificing credibility, it is widely perceived as both financially and intrinsically rewarding, and so has therefore become an aspirational graduate career choice. Despite such desirability, however, there is a considerable lack of diversity amongst the workforce, which consists almost entirely of young white men. Women are particularly poorly represented, not only in relation to overall employee numbers, but also in terms of their distribution across both job roles and the corporate hierarchy. Although conforming to stereotypical expectations, it is apparent that this cannot simply be attributed to inherent sex differences in ability or preference. In addition, a number of online exposés have revealed that, despite having a positive public image, extreme working hours are endemic within the industry. Rather counterintuitively, it appears that employees choose to adopt such working practices, rather than being made to. This thesis considers how such problematic issues are interrelated through the existence of a particular workplace culture, and suggests that it is both a cause and a consequence of them. In particular, it is proposed that the extreme working practices within video game development provide traditionally marginalised male groups with a resource for the social performance of a locally hegemonic form of masculine gender identity. Consequently, this suggests that there is a significant incentive for those benefiting from such masculine resources to protect them, which is likely to result in an industry culture that is hostile to feminine women. By examining the discourse within a number of social interactions that naturally occur at the interface between the industry and the public, this thesis considers how the maintenance of such a masculine version of 'reality' is carried out in practice. Particular attention is paid to the way in which the utilisation of dichotomous categorical stereotypes to manage local interactional issues acts to further propagate such constructs as global resources for use in future interactions. Most significantly, the application of a novel method of visual analysis to metaphorical representations of video game developers suggests that recruitment advertisements act to conflate masculinity and competence. Employees who fail to perform masculinity through the adoption of extreme working practices are therefore likely to be regarded as technically incompetent. As a consequence, women who wish to maintain their femininity will either not enter the industry at all, or remain in low status positions. Since the few women that do progress must behave like stereotypical men in order to attain positions of power, they are then unlikely to regard the culture as problematic or seek to reform it. The self-reinforcing nature of such a workplace culture offers an explanation as to why stand-alone interventions have so far had little impact on either work/life balance or female underrepresentation, and suggests that such issues cannot be addressed by simply seeking to impose a critical mass of women into the industry. Instead, it is proposed that interventions should treat these issues as mutually reinforcing, and therefore directly tackle the way in which they are linked by an industry culture that is maintained through the ongoing reproduction of various problematic discourses relating to dichotomous categorical stereotypes.

This thesis examined the presentation of self in Massively Multiplayer Online games, to investigate how players create and maintain versions of self in these environments. Key research questions concerned the motivation for engaging in these behaviours, the impact of such activities on their offline lives and for those that did not engage in the active presentation of self, why they did not do this. There were three studies in the thesis, employing a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The first study consisted of interviews (n=29), analysed using Grounded theory, and the second an online focus group (n=13 participants) explored using thematic analysis. These results were combined to create a theoretical model for the presentation of self in MMOs. Based on these concept statements a third study (n=408) was created, using an online questionnaire design. Results indicated that a five factor model was the most satisfactory means of explaining the presentation of self in MMOs – with Presentation of the Existing Self, Social Interaction, Gaming Aesthetics, Presenting Different Sides of the Self, and Emotional Impact as the salient factors. Virtual environments are rapidly emerging as a core element of human socialising, as evidenced by the growth of the games industry and the expansion of social networking sites in the last ten years. MMOs represent just one type of virtual environment but also some of the most exciting, since they allow the presentation of multiple versions of self in a fantastical social environment. The thesis adds to the literature through its examination of the presentation of self, in illustrating how and why playe3rs experience and represent their offline self in MMOs. This has not been achieved in any other previously published work and is an original contribution to the literature.

At the start of this research in September 2010, reported crime in general and specifically in the borough of Fairfield in London, continued to fall, and this included youth crime (Metropolitan Police 2010). Fairfield has replaced the name of the actual Borough. Despite this there was a perceived problem by many of those in authority and the community of Fairfield, of greatly increased anti-social behaviour and criminality involving young people. This resulted in anti-social behaviour orders being imposed and the increased use of exclusion zones as a tactic to reduce this behaviour. It would be unwise to go as far as to deny that the behaviour of the young is problematic; but the criminalisation of this behaviour ensures that its causes, and indeed, its objectives, recede into the background (Smith 2003: p188). To deal with this perceived level of crime there was a heavy emphasis in terms of police time and budget on catching and punishing offenders as a way of dealing with crime and anti-social behaviour as opposed to preventing the offending. There was also in the opinion of the author, but with academic support, a lack of understanding of what worked to positively influence the behaviour of young people. From talking to young people through his work this included in the home, school, and within the criminal justice system. This was combined with a belief that young people were neither consulted, nor listened to on the rare occasions they were spoken to. This work will look to answer the following questions: • Why ‘society’ has the perception it does about young people concerning criminal and poor behaviour. • What governments have sought to do to achieve a level of control of such behaviour through legislation and policy, the theoretical support for this, and whether these are the most effective policies considering all the factors in the young people’s lives. • Finally it will look to examine what young people feel are the things that effect their behaviour in a positive or negative way in the home, in school, and in the community. The opinions of the young people were obtained through surveys conducted over three years which were analysed using SPSS, together with one to one interviews and group discussions. Taken together, this provided sufficient information on which to base analysis and conclusions concerning behaviour and the most effective interventions in Fairfield and beyond.